New to Fios w/questions about Tivo and Phone

[3pointers]

After the lines being in ground for over a year, Fios is finally available to our area.

I am happily switching from Dish, as I'm fed up with being without ABC for 6 months and only $1.00 a month credit for the inconvenience.

However, I have a few questions:

1. I'm confused about the phone service. Is it like a regular land line or like VoiP?

2. Also, I'm seriously considering getting a Tivo, but not sure if the Series 3 is really worth the extra money.

Since we listen to the TV through our home theater system, is there any benefit to the THX certified? I know most people probably get it mainly for the larger storage capacity, but I don't usually have that many programs recorded that I need a lot of storage.

I also understand I would not have access to VoD, correct?

And, lastly, I can't record on the Tivo and watch the recording on another TV like could with Verizon's Home Media DVR, right?

Just trying to decide what I need to order before I place the order.

Thanks.

 

[JPL]

I can answer some of these. First, yes, FiOS phone is regular phone service. It's not VoIP (although Verizon is planning on rolling out a new VoIP service at some point). From a user perspective, you won't notice any difference to your current phone service. The fiber will get fed to a box called an Optical Network Terminal (ONT) which will either be on the inside or outside of your house. That box converts the light to an electrical signal for all your services. For phone they're going to take the copper lines that currently go into your NID (phone box on the outside of your house) and instead reroute them to the ONT. That's basically it. From that point on it, it's good old fashioned traditional phone service. About the only thing I noticed - my phone signal got stronger when we switched to FiOS.

Also, because the ONT is powered by your house, they give you a battery backup - that's designed to give you phone service for 7 hours should you lose power.

As for the TiVo... I can't answer whether or not it'll be worth it. I have Verizon's Home Media DVR (aka the multi-room DVR) and it works just fine for what I need. If you get a TiVo, then what you said is correct- you won't have access to Verizon's VOD (my main reason for not getting one). As for doing room-to-room feeds, apparently TiVo does have their own similar service, but you would need a second TiVo on your other TV to make that work.

With Verizon's Home Media DVR, you're able to send recordings from the DVR to other TVs - but those other TVs have to have a set top box on them. Either the SD STB (the QIP2500) or the HD box (forget the model number - I think it's the 7100). You can't feed from DVR to DVR (although I understand that's coming at some point). The HM version of the DVR also allows you to stream digital music and pictures from your computers to the TV with the DVR on it. And that will soon include streaming video too - both home video and video from various internet sources (e.g. YouTube). They're also working on a Sling-type capability, although there's no word on when that's coming out.

 

[vurbano]

After the lines being in ground for over a year, Fios is finally available to our area.

I am happily switching from Dish, as I'm fed up with being without ABC for 6 months and only $1.00 a month credit for the inconvenience.

However, I have a few questions:

1. I'm confused about the phone service. Is it like a regular land line or like VoiP?

2. Also, I'm seriously considering getting a Tivo, but not sure if the Series 3 is really worth the extra money.

Since we listen to the TV through our home theater system, is there any benefit to the THX certified? I know most people probably get it mainly for the larger storage capacity, but I don't usually have that many programs recorded that I need a lot of storage.

I also understand I would not have access to VoD, correct?

And, lastly, I can't record on the Tivo and watch the recording on another TV like could with Verizon's Home Media DVR, right?

Just trying to decide what I need to order before I place the order.

Thanks.

I just ordered 2 new Tivo HD's($240 a piece on amazon) a piece with recently released, state of the art, green, quiet AV drives from western digital (WD10EVCS) and a 20 dollar software program called instant cake from DVRupgrade.com. My guess is that the THX certification is bologna (I didnt know Tivo even had an amplifier section). I don't think you want the older series 3, I think it requires 2 cable cards. FIOS doesnt copy protect anything so you can get MRV and video extraction on the boxes all supported by Tivo with tivo software. You won't have VOD but you will have Netflix, youtube, video from your computer on the Tivo and MRV if you buy 2.

 

[cebbigh]

After the lines being in ground for over a year, Fios is finally available to our area.

I am happily switching from Dish, as I'm fed up with being without ABC for 6 months and only $1.00 a month credit for the inconvenience.

However, I have a few questions:

1. I'm confused about the phone service. Is it like a regular land line or like VoiP?

2. Also, I'm seriously considering getting a Tivo, but not sure if the Series 3 is really worth the extra money.

Since we listen to the TV through our home theater system, is there any benefit to the THX certified? I know most people probably get it mainly for the larger storage capacity, but I don't usually have that many programs recorded that I need a lot of storage.

I also understand I would not have access to VoD, correct?

And, lastly, I can't record on the Tivo and watch the recording on another TV like could with Verizon's Home Media DVR, right?

Just trying to decide what I need to order before I place the order.

Thanks.

The older series 3 is not worth the extra money. THX certification in this case is pure marketing and you do need to use 2 M cards with it. The backlit remote control is nice but you can order them seperately.

I'm not knocking the series 3. I have one and I love it. The larger internal hard drive is nice and it works great with my 1TB calvary ecternal drive that I picked up cheap. But the only reason I went with the series 3 versus a regular HD Tivo is I found a great deal on a used on on Ebay.

 

[3pointers]

Thank you for the replies. I think I'll just go with Verizon's hardware for now. I can always switch to Tivo later if I want.

Now I just need to decide if I should keep my Vonage or go with their phone.

 

[vurbano]

Thank you for the replies. I think I'll just go with Verizon's hardware for now. I can always switch to Tivo later if I want.

Now I just need to decide if I should keep my Vonage or go with their phone.

I have Vonage and decided to go with the Verizon package.

 

[Ken F]

I have Vonage and decided to go with the Verizon package.

I stuck with Vonage.

I'm on Vonage's unadvertised $4.99/mo plan which offers unlimited incoming minutes with $0.038/min per outgoing call. Most of my outgoing calls are made via cell, so I only pay about $11/mo after taxes.